


Cry For The Devil

by HandmaidenOfHorror



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Body Dysmorphia, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gen, Start Of Darkness, Suicide Attempt, There Are No Psychiatrists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:34:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23065573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandmaidenOfHorror/pseuds/HandmaidenOfHorror
Summary: One day teenage prince Laurent realizes his voice is changing, and it goes downhill from there.
Relationships: Aleron & Regent (Captive Prince)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3
Collections: Gen Freeform Exchange2020





	Cry For The Devil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fairleigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairleigh/gifts).



> Please mind the tags. The story has no sexual content, but includes a scene of an attempted suicide. Furthermore, later on there's discussion of pedophilic attraction. This really isn't a story for just any reader. (I edited the scene of suicide attempt to make it less graphic, but it's still potentially triggering.)  
> Furthermore, for the sake of story I choose to name the Regent Laurent, making for an interesting paralell.

It was a beautiful day when Laurent, younger prince of Vere, walked into the family chapel with his favourite pastime activity in sight – singing. The thirteen ( _almost fourteen_ , he always clarified, giving an effect contrary to his intentions) year old boy was proud of his melodic, high voice, compared by his mother to that of a maiden (his brother found it a great joke and kept calling him ‘Princess’ despite the boy’s objections).

As always, he started with voice exercises, but this time his voice was utterly uncooperative. It was hoarse, and the notes were either too high or too low. Embarrassed, the boy returned to his room and took to reading instead, avoiding talking when possible (not that the people in the family really wanted to hear what he had to say anyways).

Laurent felt anxious. His singing was the only time when his family was actually interested in him, the only time they (well, his mother) praised him. That’s why he has been putting all his efforts into singing as beautifully as possible, and the sudden inability to do it lowered his mood greatly. He asked for common cold medicines, but after the situation did not improve for several days, the boy realized that the problem might be of a greater scope than initially had thought.

The idea of losing his beautiful voice filled Laurent with dread. What good would he be for then? Second sons are, at best, used for political marriages (Laurent didn’t like the idea of marrying somebody chosen without his input, but it couldn’t be helped), and otherwise only had value if the eldest died. That’s what they were for. And therefore, Laurent got very little attention. He didn’t want it to dwindle to none.

Laurent decided to overcome his embarrassment and visit his father asking for help. He finally gathered his courage late in the afternoon, hoping to catch the king as he was going to sleep, with nobody to interfere. Unfortunately, there was a person very keen on interfering.

“Oi, Princess!”, his older brother emerged from an alcove near their parents’ private chamber, “congratulations on becoming a man!”

“What do you mean?” asked Laurent quietly, trying to keep his voice steady. Dammit! He was so focused on his own problem that he forgot that his older brother liked to watch Laurent, hoping to find something he could use to mock and humiliate him. Of course he’d realize!

Aleron laughed, “No matter how hard you try to hide it, and your attempts are adorable by the way, you cannot conceal your voice changing!”

“Voice changing?”, Laurent was terrified by the notion.

“Yup! It happens to boys around your age – the voice changes, becomes deeper, more masculine, like that of an adult man’s. It signals the start of puberty! Soon enough, you will become as manly as me!”

Despite the older boy grinning in a friendly manner, every word of Aleron felt like an arrow striking Laurent. His voice, his beautiful voice, was about to be gone, never to return. And he’s going to become like older men in the family, smelly, hairy, with voices like stupid rams – obscene! He’d rather die than become like that.

“Is there a way to stop it?” Laurent asked Aleron, but his older brother laughed again.

“Not unless you cut off your own balls, like the monks, the Akielonian harem guards or the opera singers,” seeing Laurent’s expression growing hopeful, he added, “Don’t even think about it! It won’t give you your voice back, it would just make you an eunuch, somebody not a boy, but never truly a man. People will see it. They will laugh at you. You’d bring even more shame to the family than you already do-”

Aleron realized the implication of his words as they left his mouth. “I’m so sorry, Laurent-“ but it was too late. Tears formed in the younger boy’s eyes and he dashed away from his brother (who was always forgetting how fast and agile the smaller boy was).

Laurent got to his own room and locked all entrances. So that was what his family thought of him, huh? Aleron, as mean as he sometimes tended to be, was always honest and had a tendency to say thinks before thinking them over (he was not too bright if you asked Laurent – but of course, nobody ever asked him on his opinion on anything) – therefore, his words must have been sincere. Laurent suspected so, sometimes, when he couldn’t fall asleep and let his mind wander late at night, but to have it confirmed? At the same time he realized he lost the thing he was the most proud of? It was too much to bear.

Laurent was methodical when it comes to preparing his death. To ensure the success, he decided to combine two methods: a whole bottle of the potent sleeping potion given to him by his mother(she had instructed him to never, under any circumstances, take more than one teaspoon of the concoction, even if he thought the initial dose was not working) and a long hunting knife given to him by his father on his most recent birthday. The boy appreciated the symbolism.

As he was gathering the objects and heating water for the bath (blood flows faster in a hot bath, thus both ensuring his death and making it relatively painless). He heard his brother, standing at the doors, apologize, telling him that he didn’t mean what he said ( _Liar_ , thought Laurent), asking him to let him in, finally pleading him to answer. Under other circumstances, Laurent would have been amused. His brother, the future king, saying “ _Please, Laurent, I beg you, talk to me, I’ll do whatever I can, just answer me please_ ”? A sad, small win after having already lost the game.

“Laurent, I’m coming for father, don’t do anything impulsive!” shouted Aleron before running down the corridor.

“Oh brother,” whispered Laurent, already stripped naked and holding the bottle of the sleeping mixture as he watched the bath fill with steaming hot water, “If you knew me at all, you would know all I ever do is premeditated.”

Laurent drank the full bottle (he swallowed most of it at once, after all, the bottle wasn’t truly full) and entered the bath. The effects of the potion and the heat made the boy feel as if he was losing consciousness almost immediately. He had to act fast.

He grasped the knife, but that was it - he couldn't even hold it properly. He heard his father’s voice, ordering him to open the door, but he wouldn’t be able to do so even if he had wanted to.

He dropped the knife, with the blade sounding loudly on the floor. Oh well. His father was ordering the guards to force the doors open. And that’s where Laurent's memory ended.

***

Laurent didn’t expect to ever wake up after this. Or maybe he had expected to wake up in the afterworld. Childishly, he assembled a list of questions he’d ask various historical figures and long dead philosopher, writers and poets once he gets there. Instead, he woke up in his own room, with terrible ache in his head and chest, and finding his older brother sleeping in an armchair near his bed.

How touching. Laurent hated Aleron for this. Hated him from taking away his freedom to die. Of course, his older brother was overcome with joy when he realized Laurent woke up, but his parents now looked openly disappointed. As Laurent was recovering, Aleron was always near, constantly reigniting the younger boy’s bitterness, which morphed into a more and more sinister form as he grew older.

When he returned to his chamber, he found many of his belongings missing. Nothing he could poison himself with. Nothing he could cut himself with. All belts, all chains, all metal objects, even the mirror and the small dining set, they were gone. In their place, he was given silky, easily tearable belts, wooden cups, bowls and spoons ( _how could you eat meat with a spoon?!_ ). There was even a servant watching him every time he bathed!

Laurent hated this. He hated it so much. And, at the same time, he mourned his passing beauty. He never became as ugly as his father or brother, perhaps thanks to his parents forbidding him from engaging in normal princely training (such a mixed blessing), but his void, his delicate features, they were all gone with time. He made sure to keep strict hygiene and have his whole body regularly shaved, but it only somewhat helped. He felt ugly. So ugly.

At the same time, Laurent started to obsess over boys who have not started puberty yet. They were beautiful, while he found adult men utterly repulsive (he thought nothing of women – sleeping with a woman he wasn’t married to was forbidden even for a prince, _especially_ for a prince, and after the rumors of his suicide attempt spread from the palace no family wanted to let their daughter marry him, potential connections be damned). Sexuality became linked with death. In his head, he had become death.

Years passed. His father died and Aleron became king. His brother gave much more freedom than Laurent has ever had, as if he tried to compensate all the years of being treated like a madman, despite his mother’s objections. The night after coronation, he found his hunting knife, his birthday present, returned and lying on the bedside table. A letter attached to it, in his mother’s handwriting, simply said “ _I’m sorry_ ”.

Did she mean what Laurent thought she had meant? It didn’t matter. She joined her husband a few years later. Nothing suspicious in it, both of them were already pretty old when they had the boys. They were all so damn stupid. Laurent wanted to laugh at them. He wanted to shout, " _Don't you find it a bit strange that the old queen died of an overdose of the same sleeping potion her younger son wanted to use for his own suicide years ago?_ " Alas, it would have ruined his plans

But it was fine. Aleron trusted Laurent to the point of naming his second son after him. And this was the key to his revenge.


End file.
